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Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

  2. beedee
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NEW YORK (AP) — You're used to paying extra if you use up your cell phone minutes, but will you be willing to pay extra if your home computer goes over its Internet allowance?
Time Warner Cable Inc. customers — and, later, others — may have to, if the company's test of metered Internet access is successful.
On Thursday, new Time Warner Cable Internet subscribers in Beaumont, Texas, will have monthly allowances for the amount of data they upload and download. Those who go over will be charged $1 per gigabyte, a Time Warner Cable executive told the Associated Press.
Metered billing is an attempt to deal fairly with Internet usage, which is very uneven among Time Warner Cable's subscribers, said Kevin Leddy, Time Warner Cable's executive vice president of advanced technology.
Just 5 percent of the company's subscribers take up half of the capacity on local cable lines, Leddy said. Other cable Internet service providers report a similar distribution.
"We think it's the fairest way to finance the needed investment in the infrastructure," Leddy said.
beedee

24 responses // Time Warner Cable tries metering Internet use

  • I'm currently a TW customer. I've been considering dropping everything but my Internet services, now I'm sure I will.

    Thankfully there's another provider in the area I can try, RCN. I'm going to try to make my reasons for switching known to both companies.
    beedee
  • its a series of tubes, tubes get clogged, we need drano and MORE MONEY MONEY MONEY
    lfm
    • lfm
    • 4 months ago
  • Bastards. That's just capitalism at it's finest...
    Gob less Amerkuh
    onechance
  • 1GB might sound like much, but remember that you probably will go through that pretty quickly if you watch as much video as I do.

    I see this as nothing more than a means to further limit the amount of people who have unfettered access to quality information.
    beedee
  • The internet is the source for knowledge and information transfers. Its the fastest way to talk to someone halfway across the world. I find it interesting TW would find a way to meter information transfers thus setting prices. Interesting, but not surprising. The internet is for everyone!! Who does Time Warner think they are CHINA??!
    GreenLady420
    1 response to this
  • As all companies do, the people at TW have a RESPONSIBILITY to their owners (e.g., shareholders) to find ways for the company to make more money. It is only logical that they would explore avenues like this. This is also part of the natural progression for the ISP market:

    Companies first focused on households without any product (i.e., no internet access), then they focused on households with an old product (i.e., those still on dial-up), then they fought (and continue to fight) for market share with price/service/marketing wars, and as that becomes less dynamic, they moved (or are moving) on to upcharging current customers as their last, best hope for profitable growth. This is NORMAL.

    The good news is that, if and when those upcharges become "the industry standard," one company will soon thereafter repeal them in its renewed quest for market share, causing others to follow suit, which will in turn erode profits and cause companies to go to Plan B: cutting costs. Hopefully, at this point, all of the major infrastructure improvements have been made, so that cutting costs comes in the form of customer support lines, back office expense, and sales and marketing expense, while out of competitive necessity the company maintains its high-quality, high-speed service.

    Finally, once the cost-cutting is done, we move further to Plan C: additional consolidation. This allows for greater economies of scale in infrastructure development and innovation, marketing, and general administration, all the while still delivering a reasonable return on investment for company shareholders.

    The alternative to the "information transfer toll," incidentally, is for TW to just take whatever income they hoped to obtain through these upcharges from select high-traffic users and spread it evenly across its customer base in the form of higher monthly fees for everyone.
    edmubnd
    10 responses to this
  • This is in no way analogous to cell phone minutes. You're not inhibiting small businesses or minute heavy companies when charging for minutes on a cellphone, but when you penalize bandwidth, you limit what is possible online and create a tiered system that goes against the egalitarian nature of the Internet.
    H3ADLINE
  • This is the way the Internet ends. Not with a bang, but a meter.
    beedee
  • Time Warner sucks.
    phoenix_fire999
  • After sending this story around to my friends in the area, I got this response back from a woman who's been on an MBA track wrote me in reply:

    "I thought you might find it interesting that what they drill into us in business school about the best way to build a business with long-term competitive advantages is to collude with our competitors and create an oligopoly, if a monopoly isn't possible."

    Which pretty much falls in line with what edmubnd was saying as far as what corporations are solely concerned with: profit over propriety. I understand that corporations sole responsibility is to turn a profit, within the bounds of the laws and regulations. So this is a clear cut example where we the people must demand representation and tell the business community not to fuck with our Internet.

    I've faxed my local congresswoman urging support of The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (HR 5353), have you?
    beedee
  • I'd also like to issue a prebuttal to any free-marketeers who read this, and point out that the term 'free market' is often used in a misleading way.

    It's free in the same way a sport is open for anyone with the ability and the drive to play and succeed or fail based on their merits, but all sports have RULES which the athletes much all abide in order for everyone to fail and succeed by the same standards. Who would watch the Superbowl if the Patriots got to have 26 players on the field and the Giants only had 13? How would that be fair competition?
    beedee
  • Hey darlin'!

    Comcast sucks, too.

    They're trying to censor my transmissions.

    It all sucks. Cable, gods love it, sucks.

    Mebbee the new POTUS will enact legislation to counteract the oppression.
    Amber_LaStrega
  • This is exactly why the issue of 'net neutrality is critical. This is not any form of " 'net neutrality" at all. The internet is supposed to be a tool of democracy and with this new plan there will be many who will be forced to not take part in it. It's troubling how conglomerates such as TimeWarner do not see it that way. They only see the internet as a place of commerce where it's a choice whether to use it or not. It is so very much more than that and it should be encouraging ALL to use it regardless of class, ethnic backgrounds, education, etc. I also urge everyone to write to their representative asking them to support HR5353 The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008. Make sure you are also informed of how your senators and the presidential candidates stand on the matter.
    wisegrrl

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